• In the search for more genuinely working class candidates, Labour's ruling national executive nodded through a rule change in Manchester that the conference will endorse midweek: future selection panels will have to take social class into account, as they already do race and gender. How that will affect future leadership contenders such as fast-tracked Yvette Cooper (6/4 favourite according to William Hill) and Chuka Umunna (7/1) remains to be seen.

• In choosing Michael Sandel, the market-debunking Harvard intellectual, for unprecedented conference exposure (he gave delegates an hour-long seminar), Ed Miliband officially outed himself as the geeky policy wonk friends admire and foes deride. Sandel's warning of the corrosive effects of "everything has its price" societies was undermined when he sat down and conference chair Michael Cashman said: "Michael will be signing copies of his book. It's called What Money Can't Buy." "That's something money can buy," Harriet Harman chipped in helpfully.

• But in making the first of at least three platform appearances this week, was Ed defying Brown's first law of overexposure? In a timely blog yesterday, Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's take-no-prisoners spin doctor, appeared to suggest so. McPoison, as he became known after being sacked for dirty tricks, provided a gripping account of how, exactly eight years ago, he had to break the news to chancellor Brown ("his head started to sink, then he put on his famous fixed grin") that Tony Blair had announced he planned to serve a full third term. It happened in front of a plane full of nosy hacks when Brown was en route to the IMF in Washington. The chancellor's distress was based on the calculation that "once you've had seven years [as he had at No 11], the public start to get sick of you". That's why David Cameron, Tory leader since 2005, should be rationing his appearances, not going on the David Letterman show, says McPoison. Ed Mili was on that fatal flight with Brown and gets the point.

• Or does he? Miliband is going back to his roots as a north London comprehensive school boy in a party TV broadcast this week, subtly to contrast his own pleb education with those "aristocrats" in the "millionaire cabinet", as conference delegates are calling them. Ed is not posh and helped other kids with their homework. All together now: ahhh.

•Good day: Ed Balls. In the annual MPs vs Hacks football match, played at Salford FC's ground, he took a dive to win a penalty and scored two (Andy Burnham slotted home the third) in the MPs' 3-0 win.

•Bad day: Harriet Harman. On Sky, she twice referred to David Cameron as David Miliband. A Freudian slip?